Don’t want to pay your taxes? Get out of Starmer’s Britain

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

The debate about how to define ‘working people’ is ridiculous (Getty)

We need to stop perpetuating this ridiculous debate about how to define “working people” (“Starmer intervenes in ‘working people’ Budget row with grim warning”, Monday 28 October).

Anyone who works is a working person, whatever their level of wealth or none. Anyone who isn’t, whatever their level of wealth or none, is not.

Anyone who expects not to pay more tax and is a working individual, is more likely a moron than a poor person.

As one of your recent correspondents said: If you do not want to pay tax, go and live in Somalia (“Tax is the price of living in a civilised society”, Sunday 27 October).

I don’t care how much money or influence you have. Don’t want to pay up? Then get out, and let those of us who aren’t begrudging, lazy curmudgeons get on with sorting this country out.

Michael Mann

Shrewsbury

Trump’s other floating voters

US comedian Tony Hinchcliffe omitted something from his speech at Trump’s New York campaign event, in which he compared Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage” (“Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally was an orgy of fascism”, Monday 28 October).

It was the part where people like Trump and other self-made “entrepreneurs’’ claim all the credit for making America the way it is. Their money and power has protected them from the poverty hundreds of others are forced to endure.

Trump and his team have obviously learned lessons from history, and they are now unashamedly mouthing the same propaganda as other famous fascists. Except, rather than targeting the Jewish population, they’ve chosen to target migrants instead.

Liam Power

Dundalk

Am I the wrong colour for reparations?

I struggle to understand how or why former colonies can seek reparation for Britain’s historical involvement in the slave trade, heinous though it was (“Starmer cannot afford to apologise for Britain’s part in the slave trade”, Thursday 24 October).

A couple of years ago, as a result of DNA analyses, I learnt that I was 1/6th West African and, after an ancestry search, I discovered that my great-great-grandfather was born in the British West Indies in the early 1800s. He or his parents were almost certainly slaves.

The only difference between David Lammy (who apparently believes reparation is appropriate) and me, is that he is Black and I am white. So, should I or the thousands like me, also seek reparation? I think not.

Antony Robson

Address supplied

The real price of payback

How far back in history do we intend going with this compensation (“King says painful past still hurts as he bids farewell to Samoa”, Saturday 26 October)?

As a Scot, I would include compensation for the forced Highland clearances, and I am sure the Irish would be willing to be included over the great famine and the government’s refusal to assist by scrapping the corn laws or allowing shipments to be sent over to help the starving.

Maybe the ancient Romans could be in the frame for their invasion and enslaving of the population?

Martin Leslie

Askam-in-Furness

There is a light that never goes on

When Emma Clark calls for the scrapping of daylight saving time (DST), I think she may be confused (“Why women are more afraid than ever at this time of year”, Sunday 27 October).

DST lasts from the end of March to the end of October, when the clocks go back one hour to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). This is why darkness falls earlier on winter evenings.

A three-year experiment from 1968 to 1971, when we did not put the clocks back in October but kept daylight saving time the year round, resulted in lighter evenings. But it also meant that the sun did not rise until sometime between nine and 10 o’clock in the morning, depending on what part of the country you lived in – and so the experiment ended.

The simple truth is, in midwinter in Britain, we have little more than seven hours daylight, meaning that you must either go to work in the dark or come home in the dark – or, in many cases, both. You can fiddle about with the clock all you like, but you can never change that.

Terence Carr

Prestatyn